Who Am I Tonight
by v-volatile
Summary: Nate/Sophie talk about a thing that happened to Sophie once during her years in Europe. A little angsty, a little shippy, but not too much. Just right.


Where am I tonight?

My hotel room won't remember me

And this dream will die, die by morning

And this dream won't remember me

Who am I tonight?

This hotel room won't remember me

-Neko Case

***

In Portland, it is finally getting warm. Sophie's putting on her first miniskirt of the year and she's in love, about to go out for dinner and a drink, and she should be in a great mood, but something is making her stomach sour and her head achy and her mind a mess of nerves.

She calls Nate to cancel on him, but he hears a frisson of fear and panic in her voice, and he gets a ghost of a bad feeling, concerned for her. So he says, well, Eliot seems to have left some red sauce in my fridge! So how about this, I bring you pasta and some wine at home and we can just spend the night doing nothing together? Just spend it together? And that sounds okay and she tells him it does and around seven there he is, all rumpled, because he's Nate, but she kisses his cheek and there's a little cologne there at his ear, so, he's making an effort, nevermind the wrinkled shirt.

They eat quietly on blue and white china plates from Holland on her couch, the muted TV flickering at them. He has a glass of seltzer and she is keeping the wine all to herself. On the TV some political ad shows up and a shot of an abortion clinic flashes by, the image all burned out to high contrast, blurred and sinister looking, and then another shot of the clinic thronged with protestors. The commercial ends as a young girl's plaintive, innocent white face peers at Sophie out of the television & a phone number scrolls along the bottom of the screen. Wordlessly Sophie makes a sound of disgust in her throat, and a face to go with it. She grabs the remote and slams her thumb on the power button. The TV goes black.

"Um." Says Nate, hesitant. "Something wrong?"

"No," she lies, and has another sip of wine. "Tired of TV."

"Come on now," he adds, giving her a knowing look. "Something's wrong. Tell me."

"I'm not going to tell you. No one knows anyhow. Not something I tell people."

"Well, if you put it that way, I should be the one you tell," Nate insists, gently, "since I'm not just people, I'm your friend." And he's put his food down and he's looking at her, and maybe it's the wine or the warm night air coming in the kitchen window or the way he's sitting on her couch like he lives in her apartment, but she is suddenly so very tired of carrying around this secret.

"Well," she says, and gulps more wine. For fortitude.

"I can't have children, Nate," she says, taking the approach of worst-first, and makes eye contact with him. His eyes widen. This is not what he was expecting to say, at all. But she is determined to get it out once and for all. "I can't have children because I had an operation that did not go very well for me, I almost died, in fact, and after that I decided to get my tubes tied because I could not, absolutely not, take the chance of it happening again."

"You had an abortion. So, the ad on tv…oh."

"Yes." She's pushed through with fear. She waits for a judgmental outburst. It doesn't come. "It was around this time, seven years ago," she adds, her voice wobbling. "When it begins to get warm, I usually think of it, for a few days, more so than usual. Puts me in a horrible mood. Gets me thinking about all the things I missed out on."

"I'm sorry you had to make that decision," he says, carefully,

"I am too."

"Would you want to have children, if you could?"

"Now? Yes, _yes._ So of course I can't. But I never thought I wanted to, before this, before the team," she says,_ before you, Nate,_ she thinks. "It never would have been possible. When I was hospitalized after the abortion, they told me another pregnancy or abortion could have killed me. And I was in no shape to have anything like a family. I was working seven days a week, lying through my teeth constantly, living in hotel rooms. Completely alone when I wasn't with a mark." She's starting to talk too fast and too nervously so Nate shifts on the couch and sits next to her and puts his arm around her shoulders carefully and they stare together at the black TV. "So I thought I really only had one option," she said, "and I paid someone a small fortune to tie my tubes, and here I am, wishing I could take it all back."

"I'm sorry," Nate says.

"Not your fault."

"I know, but I can still be sorry."

"Right," Sophie accedes, and finishing her wine, gets down to pouring herself some more. "Don't tell any of the team about this. I don't want people to pity me. I don't think they would see me the same way if they knew."

"I can keep a secret," Nate assures her.

"Not being able to have children, not being able to tell people your real name, having to leave paper trails that are fake, not even being able to share your great successes with family members—it's like we don't exist. It's like we're invisible. Transient," Sophie remarks.

"I disagree. I think the people we help remember us. Our team remembers us." He looks at her. "Have you ever considered adopting?"

"Stealing a kid?" Sophie counters, her eyes wide. "It would have to be a con, for sure. Can you imagine what that adoption form would look like if I answered all the questions honestly? I've daydreamed about it, of course. But I know it isn't realistic."

"I once heard that with God, everything is possible," Nate mumbles, citing the seminary days, a thing which he means to be noncommittal but it nevetheless spears Sophie in the heart. "These days I think it's more like sheer force of human will. Powerful either way, though."

"Hm." Sophie barely manages to make a sound, as she is very busy trying to avoid tears. How can this be, she thinks, he is hinting around perhaps saying that he too has thought of having (more) children, perhaps even that he has thought of having them with her. For so long in her life she had completely closed off this part of her life, and now the door opens a crack; if she looks inside the light coming from it is goddamn blinding.

"We'd have to adopt a daughter, in any case," Nate says, and pauses for a moment, "because Sam is and always will be irreplaceable."

"Oh, Christ," Sophie says, looking at the ceiling and throwing up her hands. Enough. She covers her face and cries because it was late term and her baby had been a daughter and she hasn't told anyone at all that part, and never will, and Nate winces at his comment's impact. He immediately pulls her into his arms, and she doesn't resist. The crickets outside are roaring on this warm night. Sophie soaks Nate's left shoulder in saltwater and he kisses her hair.

"I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry," he whispers in her ear, "and I don't care whose fault it is, I can't help but be sorry when you're hurt." They stay like that for a long time. Nate eventally leans back and takes her with him and they are slumped against the couch, crooked. Sophie closes her eyes. She has a headache from crying. She can feel Nate's fingers moving in her hair and touching the skin at the nape of her neck. He could be an idiot, but he was ultimately pretty wonderful. Finally, she sits up, and wipes her face with the back of her hands, and says to him,

"Don't tell anyone." And he nods. "I mean it." He nods again. _"Nate."_

"Jesus, I promise," Nate replies, and cracks a smile, and pulls her to him and kisses both of her cheeks.

"Ok, good. Though I have to admit it felt good to tell someone about that."

"I bet," he says. "It's a huge secret and it's been a long time."

"I just thought my life was in danger," Sophie murmurs, rubbing her eyes, smudging her eyeshadow. "I just thought if I didn't do it, I'd get pregnant again by accident, in the course of things at work and I'd die in some maternity ward in some hospital somewhere under an alias. I assumed the worst. It terrified me."

"You made the best decision you could, and you lived to tell," Nate says, "that's what it sounds like to me. And your life is far from over. We—you can do a lot of things before you die. Especially someone like you."

"Oh, 'we', huh?" She says, jokingly, and smiles at him and kisses his mouth, and stands up to take the empty wine bottle into the kitchen. "I should be so lucky." When she comes back into the living room she's wiped off all her eye makeup and is holding a pair of sandals in one hand. "Hey, let's go for a walk. I want to enjoy the night."

Nate hasn't had many chances to be in Portland before the team came here, and now he thinks he will permanently associate the city with being in love.

"Sounds great," Nate agrees, and he stands and takes her arm. On the sidewalk they lean against one another and find their way up her street, crickets playing a symphony, streetlights cooing down over them brightly, their sodium lamps ringed with moths. Nate wonders how he came from where he was ten years ago to where he is today, Sophie warm and solid next to him, his fingertips pressed into her hip as they walk slowly. He cannot even begin to tell the story of such a decade. It is not a matter of keeping secrets or being remembered, it is simply too good to be true, and he will tell it one day but for now they are concerned about breathing deeply on the first warm night of the year in Portland, ghosts aside.


End file.
